Author
Topic: Tuners and virtualization (Read 1578 times)

I'm planning a server that will run a few VMs including possibly a LinucMCE core.Questions is, how do I get tuner input into the core?

I could just go and by some USB tuner(s), but I would like to wait with new investments until I'm going to shift for digital TV at some point. Until then I hope to be able to reuse my old Hauppauge PVR-500 PCI card.

One option is to go for Xen, which I believe is capable of forwarding a PCI device to a guest OS, but for reasons not 100% clear to me (performance and ease of setup), I have more or less convinced my self to go with KVM! :-)As far as I know KVM cannot forward a PCI device to a guest. So:

- Can I set the host OS up to stream to the LMCE guest over the internal virtual ethernet? (which is probably not too smart considering stability of the server as a whole!)- Is putting the card in a MD elsewhere the perfect solution?

I'm planning a server that will run a few VMs including possibly a LinucMCE core.Questions is, how do I get tuner input into the core?

I could just go and by some USB tuner(s), but I would like to wait with new investments until I'm going to shift for digital TV at some point. Until then I hope to be able to reuse my old Hauppauge PVR-500 PCI card.

One option is to go for Xen, which I believe is capable of forwarding a PCI device to a guest OS, but for reasons not 100% clear to me (performance and ease of setup), I have more or less convinced my self to go with KVM! :-)As far as I know KVM cannot forward a PCI device to a guest. So:

- Can I set the host OS up to stream to the LMCE guest over the internal virtual ethernet? (which is probably not too smart considering stability of the server as a whole!)- Is putting the card in a MD elsewhere the perfect solution?Jan

What are you trying to achieve?LMCE use enough power so justify it´s own hardware.But for test/development it´s a good solution.

If I understand you right you are going to install a server with some kind of virtualization software.And LMCE core as a VM?

I haven´t tried this but if you choose a USB tuner I see no reason why it shouldn´t work as long as you don´t need a paravirtualized kernel (then you will need to make a custom lmce kernel). Make sure the virtualization solution you chose support USB 2.0 since most USB based tuners are USB 2.0 devices.From what I know there is no way to dedicate a USB device to a unique VM. But I may be wrong.I have no real experience on using USB devices for production use. Have only used it with vmware workstation for development and in the vmware esx environment I manage for living we don´t use USB at all.

Forget graphics performance. No movies and such. Maybe SDTV resolution will work if you have hardware that is powerful enough.If you can get hold of KVM with Qumranets spice protocol. Which will allow hdtv inside VMs displaying on a thin client.IT´s a commercial solution. It´s performance is really impressive. Invented for the VDI market.

I know Vmware workstation have experimental support for hardware 3D & video acceleration.But the X video driver that support this functionality is not available yet to my knowledge.At least it wasn´t a couple of month ago.

The other two solutions is not bad.It depends a little of how much linux knowledge you already have.Vmware server is easy to install and manage.

Xen have devleoped a lot over the past 12 month. At least on the management side.One drawback with xen is that it will never be integrated into mainline kernel.Which mean you are on your own. You must build a custom kernel.

KVM is the new kid in the block. It´s impressive so far.But lack good community management tools.It´s integrated into mainline kernel. Is only a couple of thousand lines of code.Have good commercial support/development by a company named Qumranet.The founder of qumranet was also heavily involved in XenSource (commercial Xen) before he started Qumranet.

What are you trying to achieve?LMCE use enough power so justify it´s own hardware.But for test/development it´s a good solution.

It's my green consciousness telling me to have only one machine running 24/7. So I will put my LAMP on it as well as a LTSP for the household. I'm planning on 8GB ram / 4x1TB WD GP / 3GHz duo core or the like, maybe a quad. Hopefully a LMCE core won't use that much itself :-)

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If I understand you right..

You do.

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if you choose a USB tuner I see no reason why it shouldn´t work

That was my believe as well. I'm just looking to save a few bucks (not much left after the above spending ;-)) by reusing my PCI card.

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Forget graphics performance.

I take it you're talking about graphics performance on the VMs?There will be no MDs on this machine. They will all be "normal".